GIT-CHECKOUT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECKOUT(1)
NAME
git-checkout - Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
SYNOPSISgitcheckout [-q] [-f] [-m] [<branch>]
gitcheckout [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] [<commit>]
gitcheckout [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] <new_branch>] [<start_point>]
gitcheckout [-f|--ours|--theirs|-m|--conflict=<style>] [<tree-ish>] [--] <paths>...
gitcheckout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...]
DESCRIPTION
Updates files in the working tree to match the version in the index or the specified tree. If no
paths are given, gitcheckout will also update HEAD to set the specified branch as the current
branch.
gitcheckout <branch>
To prepare for working on <branch>, switch to it by updating the index and the files in the
working tree, and by pointing HEAD at the branch. Local modifications to the files in the working
tree are kept, so that they can be committed to the <branch>.
If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in exactly one remote (call it
<remote>) with a matching name, treat as equivalent to
$ git checkout -b <branch> --track <remote>/<branch>
You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates to "check out the current branch",
which is a glorified no-op with a rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking
information, if exists, for the current branch.
gitcheckout -b|-B <new_branch> [<start point>]
Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as if git-branch(1) were called and then checked
out. In this case you can use the --track or --no-track options, which will be passed to gitbranch. As a convenience, --track without -b implies branch creation; see the description of
--track below.
If -B is given, <new_branch> is created if it doesn't exist; otherwise, it is reset. This is the
transactional equivalent of
$ git branch -f <branch> [<start point>]
$ git checkout <branch>
that is to say, the branch is not reset/created unless "git checkout" is successful.
gitcheckout --detach [<branch>], gitcheckout <commit>
Prepare to work on top of <commit>, by detaching HEAD at it (see "DETACHED HEAD" section), and
updating the index and the files in the working tree. Local modifications to the files in the
working tree are kept, so that the resulting working tree will be the state recorded in the
commit plus the local modifications.
Passing --detach forces this behavior in the case of a <branch> (without the option, giving a
branch name to the command would check out the branch, instead of detaching HEAD at it), or the
current commit, if no <branch> is specified.
gitcheckout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
When <paths> or --patch are given, gitcheckout does not switch branches. It updates the named
paths in the working tree from the index file or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit).
In this case, the -b and --track options are meaningless and giving either of them results in an
error. The <tree-ish> argument can be used to specify a specific tree-ish (i.e. commit, tag or
tree) to update the index for the given paths before updating the working tree.
The index may contain unmerged entries because of a previous failed merge. By default, if you try
to check out such an entry from the index, the checkout operation will fail and nothing will be
checked out. Using -f will ignore these unmerged entries. The contents from a specific side of
the merge can be checked out of the index by using --ours or --theirs. With -m, changes made to
the working tree file can be discarded to re-create the original conflicted merge result.
OPTIONS
-q, --quiet
Quiet, suppress feedback messages.
-f, --force
When switching branches, proceed even if the index or the working tree differs from HEAD. This is
used to throw away local changes.
When checking out paths from the index, do not fail upon unmerged entries; instead, unmerged
entries are ignored.
--ours, --theirs
When checking out paths from the index, check out stage #2 (ours) or #3 (theirs) for unmerged
paths.
-b <new_branch>
Create a new branch named <new_branch> and start it at <start_point>; see git-branch(1) for
details.
-B <new_branch>
Creates the branch <new_branch> and start it at <start_point>; if it already exists, then reset
it to <start_point>. This is equivalent to running "git branch" with "-f"; see git-branch(1) for
details.
-t, --track
When creating a new branch, set up "upstream" configuration. See "--track" in git-branch(1) for
details.
If no -b option is given, the name of the new branch will be derived from the remote-tracking
branch. If "remotes/" or "refs/remotes/" is prefixed it is stripped away, and then the part up to
the next slash (which would be the nickname of the remote) is removed. This would tell us to use
"hack" as the local branch when branching off of "origin/hack" (or "remotes/origin/hack", or even
"refs/remotes/origin/hack"). If the given name has no slash, or the above guessing results in an
empty name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a name with -b in such a case.
--no-track
Do not set up "upstream" configuration, even if the branch.autosetupmerge configuration variable
is true.
-l
Create the new branch's reflog; see git-branch(1) for details.
--detach
Rather than checking out a branch to work on it, check out a commit for inspection and
discardable experiments. This is the default behavior of "git checkout <commit>" when <commit> is
not a branch name. See the "DETACHED HEAD" section below for details.
--orphan <new_branch>
Create a new orphan branch, named <new_branch>, started from <start_point> and switch to it. The
first commit made on this new branch will have no parents and it will be the root of a new
history totally disconnected from all the other branches and commits.
The index and the working tree are adjusted as if you had previously run "git checkout
<start_point>". This allows you to start a new history that records a set of paths similar to
<start_point> by easily running "git commit -a" to make the root commit.
This can be useful when you want to publish the tree from a commit without exposing its full
history. You might want to do this to publish an open source branch of a project whose current
tree is "clean", but whose full history contains proprietary or otherwise encumbered bits of
code.
If you want to start a disconnected history that records a set of paths that is totally different
from the one of <start_point>, then you should clear the index and the working tree right after
creating the orphan branch by running "git rm -rf ." from the top level of the working tree.
Afterwards you will be ready to prepare your new files, repopulating the working tree, by copying
them from elsewhere, extracting a tarball, etc.
--ignore-skip-worktree-bits
In sparse checkout mode, git checkout -- <paths> would update only entries matched by <paths> and
sparse patterns in $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout. This option ignores the sparse patterns and
adds back any files in <paths>.
-m, --merge
When switching branches, if you have local modifications to one or more files that are different
between the current branch and the branch to which you are switching, the command refuses to
switch branches in order to preserve your modifications in context. However, with this option, a
three-way merge between the current branch, your working tree contents, and the new branch is
done, and you will be on the new branch.
When a merge conflict happens, the index entries for conflicting paths are left unmerged, and you
need to resolve the conflicts and mark the resolved paths with git add (or git rm if the merge
should result in deletion of the path).
When checking out paths from the index, this option lets you recreate the conflicted merge in the
specified paths.
--conflict=<style>
The same as --merge option above, but changes the way the conflicting hunks are presented,
overriding the merge.conflictstyle configuration variable. Possible values are "merge" (default)
and "diff3" (in addition to what is shown by "merge" style, shows the original contents).
-p, --patch
Interactively select hunks in the difference between the <tree-ish> (or the index, if
unspecified) and the working tree. The chosen hunks are then applied in reverse to the working
tree (and if a <tree-ish> was specified, the index).
This means that you can use git checkout -p to selectively discard edits from your current
working tree. See the "Interactive Mode" section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate the
--patch mode.
<branch>
Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that, when prepended with
"refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that branch is checked out. Otherwise, if it refers to a
valid commit, your HEAD becomes "detached" and you are no longer on any branch (see below for
details).
As a special case, the "@{-N}" syntax for the N-th last branch checks out the branch (instead of
detaching). You may also specify - which is synonymous with "@{-1}".
As a further special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for the merge base of A and B if
there is exactly one merge base. You can leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it
defaults to HEAD.
<new_branch>
Name for the new branch.
<start_point>
The name of a commit at which to start the new branch; see git-branch(1) for details. Defaults to
HEAD.
<tree-ish>
Tree to checkout from (when paths are given). If not specified, the index will be used.
DETACHEDHEAD
HEAD normally refers to a named branch (e.g. master). Meanwhile, each branch refers to a specific
commit. Let's look at a repo with three commits, one of them tagged, and with branch master checked
out:
HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
|
v
a---b---c branch 'master' (refers to commit 'c')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
When a commit is created in this state, the branch is updated to refer to the new commit.
Specifically, gitcommit creates a new commit d, whose parent is commit c, and then updates branch
master to refer to new commit d. HEAD still refers to branch master and so indirectly now refers to
commit d:
$ edit; git add; git commit
HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
|
v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
It is sometimes useful to be able to checkout a commit that is not at the tip of any named branch, or
even to create a new commit that is not referenced by a named branch. Let's look at what happens when
we checkout commit b (here we show two ways this may be done):
$ git checkout v2.0 # or
$ git checkout master^^
HEAD (refers to commit 'b')
|
v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
Notice that regardless of which checkout command we use, HEAD now refers directly to commit b. This
is known as being in detached HEAD state. It means simply that HEAD refers to a specific commit, as
opposed to referring to a named branch. Let's see what happens when we create a commit:
$ edit; git add; git commit
HEAD (refers to commit 'e')
|
v
e
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
There is now a new commit e, but it is referenced only by HEAD. We can of course add yet another
commit in this state:
$ edit; git add; git commit
HEAD (refers to commit 'f')
|
v
e---f
/
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
In fact, we can perform all the normal Git operations. But, let's look at what happens when we then
checkout master:
$ git checkout master
HEAD (refers to branch 'master')
e---f |
/ v
a---b---c---d branch 'master' (refers to commit 'd')
^
|
tag 'v2.0' (refers to commit 'b')
It is important to realize that at this point nothing refers to commit f. Eventually commit f (and by
extension commit e) will be deleted by the routine Git garbage collection process, unless we create a
reference before that happens. If we have not yet moved away from commit f, any of these will create
a reference to it:
$ git checkout -b foo (1)
$ git branch foo (2)
$ git tag foo (3)1. creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, and then updates HEAD to refer to branch foo.
In other words, we'll no longer be in detached HEAD state after this command.
2. similarly creates a new branch foo, which refers to commit f, but leaves HEAD detached.
3. creates a new tag foo, which refers to commit f, leaving HEAD detached.
If we have moved away from commit f, then we must first recover its object name (typically by using
git reflog), and then we can create a reference to it. For example, to see the last two commits to
which HEAD referred, we can use either of these commands:
$ git reflog -2 HEAD # or
$ git log -g -2 HEAD
EXAMPLES
1. The following sequence checks out the master branch, reverts the Makefile to two revisions back,
deletes hello.c by mistake, and gets it back from the index.
$ git checkout master (1)
$ git checkout master~2 Makefile (2)
$ rm -f hello.c
$ git checkout hello.c (3)1. switch branch
2. take a file out of another commit
3. restore hello.c from the index
If you want to check out all C source files out of the index, you can say
$ git checkout -- '*.c'
Note the quotes around *.c. The file hello.c will also be checked out, even though it is no
longer in the working tree, because the file globbing is used to match entries in the index (not
in the working tree by the shell).
If you have an unfortunate branch that is named hello.c, this step would be confused as an
instruction to switch to that branch. You should instead write:
$ git checkout -- hello.c
2. After working in the wrong branch, switching to the correct branch would be done using:
$ git checkout mytopic
However, your "wrong" branch and correct "mytopic" branch may differ in files that you have
modified locally, in which case the above checkout would fail like this:
$ git checkout mytopic
error: You have local changes to 'frotz'; not switching branches.
You can give the -m flag to the command, which would try a three-way merge:
$ git checkout -m mytopic
Auto-merging frotz
After this three-way merge, the local modifications are not registered in your index file, so git
diff would show you what changes you made since the tip of the new branch.
3. When a merge conflict happens during switching branches with the -m option, you would see
something like this:
$ git checkout -m mytopic
Auto-merging frotz
ERROR: Merge conflict in frotz
fatal: merge program failed
At this point, git diff shows the changes cleanly merged as in the previous example, as well as
the changes in the conflicted files. Edit and resolve the conflict and mark it resolved with git
add as usual:
$ edit frotz
$ git add frotz
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 1.8.3 05/24/2013 GIT-CHECKOUT(1)

Reporting Problems

The way to report a problem with this manual page depends on the type of problem:

Content errors

Report errors in the content of this documentation with the feedback links below.

Bug reports

Report bugs in the functionality of the described tool or API through Bug Reporter.

Formatting problems

Report formatting mistakes in the online version of these pages with the feedback links below.